There are plenty of high-tech phone features to yearn for, but Microsoft is applying for the patent on one so simple, primitive, and awesome you’ll be amazed you didn’t think of it yourself: the ability to smack your phone and have it shut up.
It’s that simple, the phone makes a noise, you hit it, it shuts up. The patent application itself favours the term “whack,” but I’ll spare you the numerous whack-off puns and let you come up with them on your own. Joking aside, measuring an angry whack with the accelorometer seems like an extremely elegant (if violent) solution to the my-phone-is-going-off-in-my-pocked-oh-god-this-is-embarrassing-now-I-have-to-dig-it-out-to-shut-it-off problem.
Microsoft probably could have picked a better term than “whack,” especially in a context where it’s right next to “off” but the idea is great. The next big feature I’d want in a phone is definitely being able to whack it off. [Patent Bolt via The Next Web]